Ex-Officer Gets 6 Years in Fake Police ID Card Scam

A former Los Angeles police officer was sentenced Friday to more than six years in prison for bribery, robbery, gun possession and manufacturing fake LAPD identification cards.

Earlier this week, a jury convicted Michael Edelstein, who authorities say is also charged with extortion in an unrelated case in New York, of the bribery and card charges. He then pleaded guilty to the remaining charges in a deal with prosecutors.

“I stand before you a broken man,” Edelstein told Superior Court Judge Kathryne Stoltz, reading from a written statement. He apologized to his family and the Los Angeles Police Department. “I’m deeply ashamed and remorseful.”

Edelstein was fired by the LAPD in 1991 for illegal firearms possession. He was arrested last January for manufacturing fake police identification, which authorities said were visually indistinguishable from the real thing.

A few months later, Edelstein tried to bribe an LAPD property clerk to get the evidence, but the clerk reported the attempt to her supervisors and Edelstein was subsequently recorded on tape offering her $25,000 for them.

The robbery charge related to a dispute that ended with Edelstein helping himself to computer equipment from a business and telling the owner he would return it when he got his money, Deputy Dist. Atty. Steven J. Ipsen said.

“This is a person who, when he’s in trouble, will do whatever he needs to get out of it,” Ipsen said. “He’s sort of like that bully in the schoolyard who beats you up for your roller skates and takes your lunch money.”

LAPD Sgt. Stephen Merrin, one of three detectives who investigated Edelstein, said authorities do not know how many fake identification cards Edelstein made.

Edelstein’s lawyer, Andrew Flier, asked for leniency, saying his client had used bad judgment.

“He was a desperate man doing a desperate act, trying to get the district attorney’s office off his back,” Flier said. “I have never, in all my years, seen a more stupid crime.”

Reading from his statement, Edelstein said, “I still consider myself having a blue heart. I would step in and help a police officer right now if he needed me.”

Wearing jail-issued clothing and silver wire-rimmed glasses, Edelstein told the judge he was not a dangerous man. Four relatives also asked the judge to give Edelstein a minimum sentence.

“He is not the menacing figure that is being portrayed,” Jennifer Edelstein, the defendant’s wife, told the judge. “He is not a bad person. He is an outstanding person who has strayed from the path.”

Stoltz sentenced him to six years, four months, just shy of the seven-year maximum he was facing.